Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1887-01-05
The Lumber Interests of West Virginia.
A Fayette county, West Virginia, cores.

A Fayette county, West Virginia, CORES
pendent of the Chicago Northwestern
Lun'be'man furnishes that journal with an
interesting account of the lumber interests
on and adjacent to the Newport News and
Mississippi Valley railroad line, formerly
the G. & O.. R. W. The past year has
been very fair one in business with steady
prices. There has been no boom, but as
the mill men have learned the needs and
requirements of the Eastern markets, they
have as a rule done better than formerly.
The freshets of last Spring carried away
an immense quantity of logs, and the writer
estimates the loss to owners between Romeo
verte, Greenbrier county, and st. Adams,
Kanawha county, at the mouth of Coal
river, to be as great as twenty-five thou
sand, which would have yielded five mil
lion feet of lumber. A small percentage
of the logs were caught lower down the
Kanawha river, but the amount secured to
the original owners was very small COM
pared with the loss. The stocks on hand
have in the main been disposed of to buy
ers from Pennsylvania, New York and
New England. Several mills have entered
into contracts for their entire output dur
ing 1887. A Chicago firm has agreed to
take from one mill three million feet an
nualIy for the coming three years. More
capital and larger plants are needed, es-
pecially in building logging railroads out
into the forests, as there are standing with
in from five to ten miles of the railroad
immense tracts that could be bought on
favorable terms.
The correspondent of the L1mberman
confirms the reports made by Mr.. 3. c.
Fernow, Secretary of the American Forestry
Congress, as he surveyed large boundaries
of forest lands by the same rules that MIR.
Fernow applied in bis estimates, and which
be found correct. He found as the smallest
five thousand feet, and on some as much as
nineteen thousand feet pei acre. In these
estimates, nothing under eighteen inches
was included, except walnut and ash,
which were included as low as sixteen
inches. On some lands he found poplar
trees which would yield twenty thousand
feet to the acre, counting nothing under
twenty inches in diamater, and concludes
by saying that the lumber interests In all
that region is yet in its infancy.
We have observed, during the past year
especially, the immense amount of lumber
transported over the line of the Newport
News and Mississippi Valley Company, and
frequently referred to the fact on seeing
the trains as they daily passed through
Staunton. If that great interest is yet in
its infancy, as the writer asserts, the imagi-
nation can scarcely conceive Of the volume
of the lumber-cemmerce destined fUr the
Eastern markets yet to flow along this
great channel of communication, nor of the
realization of future wealth in store for the
neighboring western daughter of the sold
Commonwealth.
In former articles in the Lumbermdn, the
great development of timber which will be
made by the contemplated extension of the
Norfolk and Western branch line from
Pocahontas to the Ohio river at OF near
Huntington, was mapped out. The sur
veys have been made, and the accommodating
and gradually developing enterprises Of the
Norfolk and Western Company in the
manner which has witnessed progress and
fulfillment of promise in the Pocahontas
and Cripple Greek regions, is q safe guar
anty of the future. opening which is to come
for the wide expanse of country in West
Virginia drained by the Big Sandy river
and its tributariss-a region richly blessed
with immense lumber-forest, coal and iron
resources.
The continued discussion of these great
interests by so able and influential journal
as the Lumberman will, in time, aid in
drawing to them ample means for rich de-
yelopment.